Democrats have successfully reframed the issues of Bolton and the judges
The spirit or the person of George Lackoff is working — very successfully — for Senate Democrats. Lackoff is the Cal Berkeley professor of linguistics who has written a manifesto on framing issues for liberals so that they can set the terms of debate on issues to favor them. As the NYT reported on February 11, Lackoff has been working for Democrats in Congress, apparently to great effect. Here is a link to an NPR interview of Lackoff which is pretty informative.
On several occasions, Rush Limbaugh has been less than complimentary to Lackoff, but he might be wrong about this. Consider two of the issues of the moment:
1) John Bolton. Democrats do not want to talk about the deeply corrupt UN (Roger Simon, Wretchard) and how badly it needs reforming, so they have changed the subject entirely. It is pretty easy to imagine the opposition staffers going through the briefing material on Bolton and seizing upon his being a tough boss to frame the Bolton issue as “abuser.” It’s an excellent choice by Democrats. It is consistent with their overall communications strategy, which is to portray Republicans as mean and extreme. (And Bolton does have that Dodge City moustache thing going.) George Voinovich promptly fell for it, though being praised and called “distinguished” by Kweisi Mfume on Hardball may ultimately prove too much even for Senator Voinovich.
2) The judges. Here again the Democrats have succeeded brilliantly in changing the subject from a President’s historic right to pick judges of his choosing and get them confirmed unless they were unfit to be judges. Instead they made the issue the safeguarding of the sacred traditions of the Senate in defense of liberty and fairness — code name: filibuster. By doing so, the issue of actual judges has all but disappeared (and you can bet when the actual judges appear, they will be “abusers,” “racists,” “gay bashers,” and much worse).
As with Voinovich getting weak-kneed over Bolton, Senate Republicans have been pathetic on the judge issue. You should have heard Senator John Kyl of Arizona on Hugh Hewitt the other day. He was all passive tense and mealy mouthed about what the GOP is going to do. He could have said this: “the President has a right to select judges, and the Senate should confirm all judges who will receive a majority vote; if the Democrats want judges whom they like better, they should elect a Democratic President and Senate.” Instead he sounded like Senate Republicans were nervously waiting until midnight so they could dig a shallow grave and bury a body in the backyard.
So we’ve come to this. The Bolton nomination is on hold because George Voinovich has been rolled by a professor from Berkeley. And the Senate Republicans are anxiously conducting polls on the filibuster because they too have been bested by the Democrats’ framing of the issue of judicial appointments.
If Lackoff’s tactic of reframing the issues ultimately succeeds in the matters of Bolton and the judicial nominees, we’d suggest he move on to reframing Republicans from “mean and extreme” to “losers.” It won’t be a stretch to do so.
April 24th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Right on! You nailed it. Democrats don’t need sticks and stones when simple repetitive distortion, name-calling, and finger-pointing works so well. It is as appalling as it is instructive to see our weak kneed representatives go wobbly when they hear the dogs barking. At times like these, I am ashamed to be on the same team.
If the cowardly Senate Republicans don’t develop some backbone, and soon, they might just as well fold the tents and go home. The way to deal with a bully is to smack him down. It isn’t difficult, and it works every time, as any schoolboy knows.
August 4th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Please note that I am not saying that you are a bad person, or the republicans, or the democrats. I am merely pointing out that it does indeed happen and was pioneered by the republicans. I pointed out some rather extreme examples, and Bush may have reformed some things. But from what I heard it was his opponent who was more sucessfull at it.